Hey there, and thanks for clicking on the newest Ele Guide, designed for 5.4.7! I hope to, through this guide, clarify many of the basic questions that I get on a regular basis, and also teach some more advanced players some tricks as well.

Ele thankfully received no changes in 5.4.7 – in fact, thanks to the good design of the class they didn’t need any adjustments at the start of the patch, however now they may need a little bit of a nerf because of gear scaling and the RNG factor.

One of the elements I love most about Ele is the fact that it has so many different playstyles and talent choices – with most of them viable to a fairly decent rating! Here is a breakdown of the ‘’viable’’ options for talents, aswell as those I consider manadatory.

Let’s go through this tier by tier, one at a time.

Level 15: Nature’s Guardian is by far the superior choice in this tier for every spec of shaman, not just elemental. It gives you a nice big heal and hp boost, which can be crucial vs teams like Godcomp or RMX that can kill you in a stun. The premier reason this is better than the other two choices is that it is passive, has a short ICD, and activates in stuns. Astral Shift is a shield wall on a relatively short cd that could be useful vs teams that don’t cc you at all while tearing you a new anus, but I still feel NG is better in this situation. Stone Bulwark can be killed off and doesn’t shield for much, making it practically worthless.

Level 30: Windwalk is often superior here vs cleaves and when you don’t play with a druid. Not only can you drop a windwalk on a Root Trap for example, which can help keep your healer out of cc if they root you and your healer and he has no dispel and they blanket you. It also is useful versus boomkins and other eles who use beam, however these often break from dots and are used as a CS rather than a blanket. I personally prefer earthgrab when I play with symbiosis beam, as this gives me freedom to easily beam, for example, a ele in a LSD mirror while my lock fears the druid or I ns hex, giving us time to cc the ele in the ~2-3 seconds it takes to break the root. It is also strong against a team without freedom (i.e RMD.)

Level 45: Simply enough, Call is mandatory with any team that can fear before the next tremor is up. Priests, warlocks, and warriors when paired with a druid, pretty much. It is also needed versus hunter cleaves to get double tremor on wyvern. In the opener vs KFC you want to tremor first wyvern, prep, and tremor the fear which will come shortly after. Totemic Projection is only really good when paired with Totemic Vigor and for keeping rogues in combat or hitting stuns. Not really recommended as pretty much every comp an ele plays drs stun already and keeping rogues in combat is impossible if they are good.

Level 60: Ancestral Swiftness, or NS, is a given here, the 5% haste is really, really nice. It also allows you to hex druids or shamans without them being able to stop it. (As long as they don’t preshift or ground it, of course!). It is also a really strong execute if you don’t need it for anything else, Lava Burst, Fulminate, NS Lightning Bolt is 300k+ Damage if the Fulm crits.

Level 75: Rushing Streams, other options aren’t even debatable, they just aren’t worth it for ele.

Level 90: Unleashed Fury I feel is best, however some people like to play Ele Blast. I have been trying out ele blast in 2s and it is fun and quite easy to use, however in 3s the sustained damage increase from UF is so much higher it’s unreal, especially considering it isn’t that easy to hard cast ele blast vs any decent team. This also increases your damage on your lightning bolts as well as LB, making it a great all-round talent. It also is great for survivability, as swapping to rockbiter>unleashing on a target leads to 40% shield wall from the target that you unleashed on, making you immortal.

Mandatory Glyphs

Lightning Shield glyph is the only real mandatory glyph here, the constant 10% damage reduction is a lifesaver, especially vs teams that kill you in stuns. Without it, you are just too squishy.

Optional Glyphs

Healing Stream glyph, while in the optional section, is mandatory versus any mage, boomkin, or ele team. The 10% will top your team off as most people don’t kill Ele healing streams, and if they do, learn to hide them.

Totemic Vigor becomes useful if they are tunnelling your totems vs a team you need it, i.e healing stream vs LSD. This is also good when you play totemic projection and prevents your cap totem from being killed off instantly.

Hex is a must have vs teams where you can get easy, undispellable hexes – such as vs KFC. It becomes less strong if you play with a class that DRs hex like a mage or monk.

Shamanistic Rage really is only strong versus mages, as you cannot afford to waste your only defensive for getting out of a hoj or cap. You can use this to get out of deep freezes, and therefore allowing you to reposition. Do not use it versus locks though – if you use it with UA up you will get 100k damage on yourself and 4 seconds blanketed.

Ghost Wolf nice if you can’t use anything else, great increase on mobility when you need it.

CloakProwess, either with superior intellect or if you have tailoring, use lightweave.

ChestMainset chest, with glorious stats, a brilliant primordial ruby and a reckless gem.

BracersProwess, with Super Intellect.

GlovesResto Gloves (Ringmail), Greater Haste and a Mysterious Gem.

BeltMeditation, with a belt buckle, Mysterious Gem, and a Brilliant Gem.

LegsMainset Legs with Cerulean Spellthread, combined with a Brilliant Gem and a Mysterious Gem.

BootsAlacrity with Pandaren’s Step, and a Reckless Gem.

RingsMeditation and Cruelty rings.

TrinketsProc Trinket + PvP Trinket.

ReforgingReforge into 6% Hit, through spirit and natural hit on gear you should meet this easily. After that go for Haste>Mastery>Crit. For fully optimized reforging check out my armory at the end of the guide.

Learning how to ground is ridiculously important, if you fail at grounding your entire team will suffer. Anyone who has ever played priest or druid at decent ratings will fall into grounding easily, but someone who has little to no experience with pre-emptively stopping cc can find this aspect of the class extremely difficult. The first thing that must be noted about Grounding Totem is that it is unreliable! Calling you can ground X is not always guaranteed, SOTF clones are pretty much impossible to ground over 80+ MS for example. Therefore it is important to make sure your team is aware of this, instead of saying “I will ground this next clone”, say “I should be able to ground this clone, but incase I can’t be ready to skin/ward/port etc.”

Next I recommend you invest in downloading and modifying Interrupt Bar to show the cooldowns of when the instant ccs are back up, for example, POM Sheep, NS, FOJ, Scatter etc. Once you then see, for example, a paladin sprinting towards your healer with hoj off cd, you can ground and you have a good chance to get the hoj.

Another important aspect of shaman in general is the weapon imbues. Learning when to swap between flametongue and rockbiter is amazingly vital – the shield wall from rockbiter is a lifesaver. First, learn which of the damage dealers will be raping you. For example, there is next no point unleashing rockbiter on a rogue in RMP for example. He will do some of the damage, for sure, but 80% of the damage during a normal dance/orb will come from ice lances. If you unleash the mage, you are effectively cutting their overall damage by 20-30% which can save your life.I’m gonna edit more in as I think of them but right now I want to get this published and I can’t think of any more, these are the two most F.A.Q that I get so I thought they would be important.

:shaman: :warlock: :druid: is by far your best comp as elemental - LSD is probably in the top 3 comps in the game, depending on who you ask, of course. LSD has a plethora of CC, a fuckton of damage, and ridiculous survivability. The main weakness of this comp is how weak the druid is, even with the port + gate + fears that the druid has, they can still die really easily in stuns. This means druids that are defensive and have a good defensive pillar hugging playstyle are better for LSD. That being said, if they aren't looked at by a certain comp, i.e, idk, splay, a offensive druid is better. The main problem is that with such an LSD2 dominated ladder, the comp gets very weak very quickly as LSD2 is ridiculously hard, as well as Resto Shaman + Lock in general.

:shaman: :warrior: :druid: / :priest: Thundercleave is actually just as good as LSD imo, and it's main strength is it's tankiness and effectiveness vs LSD/LSD2 which dominate the ladder. The main idea behind this is sustained pressure and massive burst, just make sure to press slam and lava burst at the same time.

:shaman: [WW] :priest: is actually quite strong, the strengths are similar to thunder with great survivability and ridiculous burst potential. It also counters LSD. Leg Sweep>RSK>FoF while you lava burst on a healer is very nice. This has, imo, the best healer killing potential in the game in terms of sheer damage.

:shaman: :mage: :druid: - I haven't played this that much this patch but I've seen Mohrchen play it at high ratings and it seemed pretty much unhealable burst in a deep freeze. The survivability was nice also, but seems weak when the druid can be trained.

Streams:Not many eles stream, but the arguably best ele does, at twitch.tv/zeepeye.

Final Notes: I know this is incomplete at time of posting, but nevertheless I hope you got some tips out of it, this is probably the last guide I will write for a while, I don’t play to reroll anymore.

I am no pro ele but here is some pretty basic stuff about how to do damage :

Of course, you should always use lava burst on a target with the flame shock debuff.

Use the fire elemental totem in the arena opener to build pressure.

When your fire elemental is gone use searing totem when you have a spare GCD.

Use stormlash totem separately from ascendance when you and your partner both have a chance to dps a lot.

How to burst with ascendance :

Ascendance resets and remove the CD of lava burst so you always want to use it when lava burst is on CD. It's also good to know that if you're locked on your fire school (e.g pummel, kick) using ascendance will remove the lock. It's also best to use ascendance during your surge of dominance proc for max damage.

Using spiritwalker's grace during ascendance is a great idea because it allows you to run while casting lava burst and it's very convenient because it has the same 3mn CD and 15s duration.

About fulmination, it should be saved for bursting, never use it randomly, there is a free skill-capped video that explain very well when to use it :

http://youtu.be/gvP4DhtU9LM

Next I recommend you invest in downloading and modifying Interrupt Bar to show the cooldowns of when the instant ccs are back up, for example, POM Sheep, NS, FOJ, Scatter etc. Once you then see, for example, a paladin sprinting towards your healer with hoj off cd, you can ground and you have a good chance to get the hoj.

Yeah, you are right about 99% of the things you wrote there. However it is important to remember;

Searing totem is practically worthless. Maybe if everyone on the enemy team is clean, but there is next to no possibility of purge being worse than searing totem.

Flame Shock is only better than fulminate if you aren't bursting, often I see other eles sitting at 7 stacks for over a few minutes, and losing out on tons of damage despite having 3-4 flame shocks up already. If you have 3-4 up, you can give up one flame shock cd for a lava burst>fulm wombocombo for over 200k damage easily, maybe 250k. This can force cds by itself.

Yeah, you are right about 99% of the things you wrote there. However it is important to remember;

Searing totem is practically worthless. Maybe if everyone on the enemy team is clean, but there is next to no possibility of purge being worse than searing totem.

Flame Shock is only better than fulminate if you aren't bursting, often I see other eles sitting at 7 stacks for over a few minutes, and losing out on tons of damage despite having 3-4 flame shocks up already. If you have 3-4 up, you can give up one flame shock cd for a lava burst>fulm wombocombo for over 200k damage easily, maybe 250k. This can force cds by itself.

I agree with the flame shock part.

About the searing totem I'll not say that it is worthless. Searing totem ticks 40 times per minute and has a chance to crit, this means it will do ~60k dmg per minute which is more damage than one lava burst. Of course, purge has a higher priority but if you have a spare gcd and everyone is already clean there is nothing wrong with dropping a searing totem.

Standard lava burst without any dmg modifiers will hit for 50k on a player target that has flame shock on it and 60k if you have the clearcasting buff. And if there is no flame shock on the player target, without any dmg modifiers it will hit for around 34k. That is with overloads not included.

(you can test it yourself quite easy vs a dummy, just multiply the dmg by 0.2*1.56, where in full gear I have 56% pvp power)